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Harry Reid Holds NIH Funding Hostage

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) responded to a question about funding for children's cancer research by asking, "Why would we do that?" Republicans pounced on the remark as evidence that Reid cared less for sick children than for his own partisan position. While Reid tried to recover from the gaffe, what he says he really meant was just as bad, or perhaps worse: he wanted to fund cancer trials, but wouldn't unless the House accepted everything else he wanted. In effect, he is holding every program hostage until he gets his way.

After Senator Reid disingenously complained on the Senate floor that children with cancer would be shut out of clinical trials because of the government shutdown, the House passed a Continuing Resolution that funded the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The real significance of the comment is not that Reid won't fund cancer research, because Reid is in favor of that. It's that he thinks Congress should not exercise control over what gets funded and what doesn't.

“What I told Dana Bash, who is a fine reporter, is that we care about all of these things,” he continued. “We care about our state parks, we care about our veterans, but we can’t fall into the trap…of Cruz-led Republicans. That is this…we’ll cherry pick…and finally at the end, everything will be open except for ObamaCare.”

Congress' job, and especially that of the House, is exactly to cherry-pick.

The shutdown battle is a fundamental constitutional power struggle between the branches, with the Senate fighting on the side of the Executive against the House. As Mike Needham points out in The Federalist,

Official Washington regularly casts scorn on the “brinksmanship” that has characterized our nation’s fiscal debates for the last three years. There has been brinksmanship in recent years, but it’s only offensive if you wish to place our nation on perpetual cruise control.

Reid says that he doesn't want to fund any part of the government unless it all can be funded. He is, in fact, holding hostage each of these programs that the House, and most of the Senate, believe are in the national interest to fund, so that he can win a partisan political battle.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said:

House Republicans didn't want it to come to this. We have been ready to negotiate on the budget and the CR. Our conferees are appointed. We have continued to send ideas and information and options over to the Senate, and it has been with great disappointment that we have watched the Senate not take these up.

The President and Senate Majority Leader must negotiate. If anyone is in a position not to negotiate, it is the House, with full Constitutional authority to control, in as much detail as they wish, how the government does and does not spend our money.

Obama and Reid need to own the shut down because they were refusing to have a discussion; unfortunately, the way the law works is that Congress does decide what to fund and what not to fund. There are thousands of things that are legal and approved, but not funded.

As for their criticism about picking and choosing: Sort of ironic that they say that AFTER Obama gives out loads of exemptions and tweaks the law which is expressly NOT in the scope of the POTUS authority.

When the so-called "public option" single-payer healthcare program was scrapped during the legislative "debate" over ObamaCare in 2009, lawmakers working on the bill created the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan Program as a compromise. The non-profit co-op program is meant to compete with private, for-profit health insurance plans in the individual and small group markets. The 2010 healthcare law provided $3.4 billion in start-up funding to help get the program off the ground.

Sometimes a man’s just got to take a stand. Rand Paul did it his 13-hour filibuster on drone strikes, Ted Cruz did it in his 21-hour floor speech to defund ObamaCare, and now Mike Lee is invoking an obscure Senate procedure rule to completely repeal everyone’s least favorite health care law.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on Thursday showing that undercover consumers were allowed to re-enroll in health plans on the federal ObamaCare Exchange. The bogus enrollees had outstanding document issues that should have prevented them from obtaining subsidies for coverage.

More Americans paid ObamaCare's individual mandate tax for 2014 than previously estimated, according to a new report from the Internal Revenue Service's National Taxpayer Advocate. In January, the Treasury Department projected that up to 6 million households would be subject to the tax because they did not purchase a government-approved health insurance plan.

A new analysis finds that the health insurance plans offered on ObamaCare exchanges offer a choice of 34 percent fewer health care providers, on average, than plans offered on the private market. The report specifies that:

America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade association that lobbies on behalf of insurance companies in Washington and in state legislatures, announced on Wednesday that Marilyn Tavenner, the former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), will serve as its president and chief operating officer. Tavenner oversaw the disastrous implementation of ObamaCare during her tenure, which, some suspect, ultimately led in her resignation from CMS in January.

The Supreme Court has now largely upheld ObamaCare, with a carve-out from the contraceptive mandate for closely held companies, the first three times the law has been challenged in the Court. Because of this, it is difficult to have much faith that the Court will ever overturn the law based on constitutional concerns. However, there is still another case working its way through the DC Circuit, Sissel v. HHS, challenging ObamaCare based on the Origination Clause.

Health insurance companies are signaling huge health insurance premium increases ahead of the 2016 open enrollment period. This is due to the droves of older and sicker consumers who signed up for coverage on the ObamaCare Exchanges, according to a report from The New York Times. Requests submitted by insurance are approved by state regulators, such as state insurance commissioners, but the proposed rates reflect a higher utilization of healthcare than expected.